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Will GOP notice changing electorate?

After President Obama's victory, Republicans must retool, the author says. | AP Photo

By L. DOUGLAS WILDER | 12/2/12 9:26 PM EST

This November, Republicans lost a national election its rank and file had assumed for years they would win. They learned that expectations don’t win elections — votes do. And now they are left sitting in the wake of a second electoral defeat, trying to decide what to do next.

More precisely, the GOP is trying to figure out how to connect to an electorate that isn’t responding to its message anymore. The first thing the party should do is pay attention to what Democrats have gone through in the past.

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The national Democratic Party found itself in the same position after the election of 1968. Democrats had won the previous two presidential elections, but after the turmoil that rocked the ’68 contest, it was obvious society was moving in a different direction. It also was clear that Richard Nixon and his GOP had settled upon a strategy — a Southern strategy — to capitalize on that change in a way that would allow them to win more votes.

To counter what was happening, the Democratic National Committee, shortly after the election, created what was formally called the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection. In practical parlance, it became known as the McGovern Commission, after its chairman, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern. The stated purpose of the commission was to modernize how future Democratic presidential candidates were selected and to avoid the riots and intraparty division that tore the 1968 Chicago convention into tatters.

Its impact was bigger. The commission and the McGovern Rules it promulgated forever changed the nature of the Democratic Party as a whole and helped us in Virginia evolve into a new state party that led to significant electoral and governmental breakthroughs for women and minorities through the 1980s and beyond.

The McGovern Rules were wide reaching but most important for our purposes in Virginia were the requirements that (1) state parties broaden their efforts at inclusion of minorities and (2) put an end to insider control of state parties by calcified oligarchs.

In the Old Dominion, we — I was a state senator at the time — took advantage of the opportunity. We used the McGovern Rules to develop a strong bench of minorities who went on to serve in elective and appointive positions at the local, state and national levels. We included new voices in party and governmental policy making.

We began the process of making the Democratic Party look like the commonwealth it was seeking to serve. We made it more closely resemble Virginia.

A side effect of all that change was that a lot of people who were attached to the old order — in which a small number of people controlled all party and governmental operations — were either pushed out or aside.

Readers' Comments (11)

The Republican Party isn't just going to have to 'Re-Tool'. We're not talking about political positions such as abortion, gay marriage, or asking the rich to pay taxes - at all! We're talking about a Party having to learn to give blacks seat at the table when they won't ride a bus with them. We're talking about supporting the right of women to be treated as equals in all respects rather than as organic incubators. We're talking about viewing immigration as a source of renewal, and inevitability, rather than as an invasion of sub-human, alien locusts. We're taking about recognizing that every single American has the inalienable right to worship OR NOT as he damn well pleases. It means recognizing the poor as humans rather than mooching wastes of human skin. It means that Republicans will have to change in ways that they are inherently incapable of.

Humphrey lost the 1968 election because he refused to disassociate himself from LBJ's conduct of the Vietnam War. Humphrey also failed to do damage control at the convention by not denouncing the thuggery of Chicago's police, instigated by Mayor Daley. These two omissions of Humphrey gave the voters the impression that he was weak-willed and lacking in principles. The Southern Strategy by itself would not have resulted in a Nixon victory.

YOU best LISSEN YALL,, AMERIKA is a WHITE ,GOD fearing CHRISTIN ****RYand by GOD its a gonna stay that WAY fer ever. hell I know everybody down here in ALABAMA , KNOWS dis fact , but some uppity minurities aint got the mesage . SO we good ole boys gotta go an EDJICATE them again, it looks, I am a typical white suthern edjicated GOP MAN , name of BILLY BOB COBB who is givin notice that WE is gonna secede rom dis dam union again , if we dont git our way, you hear. SO dont make me mad so i git up outta my chair you dam libruls an minurities ,, If white libruls were EDJICATED an had some comon cents like usGOP tea bagger folk,, I have been reel sucesful working at the asbestos plant fer years I do cough up blood a lot nowadays but I , own my own home , a double wide trailer home, with confed flag, big autigraph picturs of WALLACE and RUSH on te wall a 62 FORD PIC UP TRUK .,all pade fer by my own sweat... well ITs TIME FER ME to go watch the reel smart FOX news now . OK

I see little indication that the new electoral landscape has really sunk in with the GOP, and a lot of indication that they will not win another national election in my lifetime. It doesn't have to be that way, but between the absolute cluelessness of continuing to use racial dog whistle politics to lock in a diminishing segment of the population, and the rightward pressure exerted by the nativist tea party wing of the party, I can't see the GOP easily adapting.

One thing the GOP base doesn't seem to realize at all is that having a few minority faces on the podium facing an audience which could just as well be from a GOP audience in 1950, and pursuing policies which are hostile to minorities (voter suppression, Arizona and Georgia styled xenophobic laws) is not a winning strategy. In fact the GOP isn't even very good at the cosmetic stuff they are trying, as evidenced by the composition of their initial slate of House committee heads.

As for the "dog whistle" politics, a lot of that comes from a deeply held notion within the GOP that minorities are by their very nature "unqualified", and that all instances of minority leadership must have come from "affirmative action". This is an idiotic racist notion that springs from having an inordinate number of idiotic racists in the GOP base. I expect stuff like that here on these forums, because any halfwit with a computer and a network connection can blurt out all the nonsense they can hammer out in a rudimentary fashion. It surprises me that it's still coming from the GOP leadership.

When Jindal says that the GOP should not be the "stupid party" he might be undertaking this project too late. If the GOP isn't going to become the modern Knownothing Party or Whig Party in terms of its future prospects, a complete up and down the line revamping is in order, and I can't see that occurring with the GOP's current composition.

The GOP has only won the national popular vote in one election in the past six. In this last election, the GOP lost the popular vote even for House seats, and would not have held onto the House except for the last round of gerrymandered districts. The popular House vote is as technically meaningless as the national popular vote/electoral vote split. But one thing it does indicate is that the GOP has been unpopular in this country for most of the past 24 years. The only way it hangs onto power at the moment is by "set-asides" in the form of favorable House districts. If it weren't for those set-asides the GOP would be a regional party of the South and a handful of sparsely populated north-central states. And at the current trajectory, those House districts will steadily leave their grasp.

I don't expect the Democrats to pick up the House in 2014, but I do expect them not to lose ground, which will be another "first" similar to the circumstances of Obama's re-election. By 2016 the Democrats will have the House, not as a tenuous coaliton of progressives and blue dogs, but as a solidly progressive bloc. By 2020, if the GOP maintains its current trajectory, all meaningful debate will be taking place within the Democratic Party.

If you are a member of a political party that plays identity politics, finds ways to divide rather than unite Americans, supports false claims of sexism and racism, and uses class warfare to win, then I guess America has changed. But if you are a member of a party that stands for our Constitution, our American values, the rule of law, the sanctity of life, the empowerment of individuals to seek out the American dream, and honesty in not promising more than the government can deliver, then the demographics are interesting but not all that relevant. We don't need two Liberal parties vying for the same vote. We do need a choice in our country's direction - will we be a European style welfare state or a American capitalistic society with greater freedom for individuals and less dependency on government?

To IRONDEM - If the GOP is the party of the 1%, how did they get 48+% of the vote? How did they reach 30 governorships as well as control of many state legislatures? Why is the GOP still a majority in the House as well as 45% of the Senate? Seems to me that the issue is whether the takers outnumber the makers.

I think more than racism - the disgust for any non-white - what kills the GOP is the pandering to the religious wackos and denial of science. Who can vote for a party where someone like Rubio won't say that the earth is more than 10,000 years old?

It's okay, GOP "internal polls" show that they don't have to change anything, they're ahead.